NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement - Salem Press

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662 ■ National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The Thirties in America the South, the Nation of Islam proved to be an important religious and political vehicle within the African American community. Initial memberships spread quickly after an ambiguous start in urban Detroit. A uniquely American version of Islam, the Nation of Islam had special resonance for racially and economically dispossessed African Americans in the 1930’s. The message of hope and equality espoused by the Nation of Islam became an important vein of African American nationalism throughout 1950’s and 1960’s. Sadie Pendaz Further Reading Lee, Martha F. The Nation of Islam: An American Millenarian Movement. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Lincoln, C. Eric. The Black Muslims in America. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1994. Muhammad, Elija. The Supreme Wisdom. 2 vols. Atlanta, Ga.: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propagation Society, 1957. Walker, Dennis. Islam and the Search for African- American Nationhood: Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan, and the Nation of Islam. Atlanta, Ga.: Clarity Press, 2005. See also African Americans; Great Depression in the United States; Jim Crow segregation; Migrations, domestic; Religion in the United States. ■ Identification Civil rights advocacy organization Date Founded on February 12, 1909 The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began as a grassroots organization in response to increased violence against African Americans. Throughout its existence, the NAACP has worked primarily through the U.S. legal system in its campaign to help African Americans gain equal civil rights. The 1930’s were a turbulent time for race relations in the United States. The increased presence of African Americans in southern cities resulted in heightened tension between the African Americans and Caucasians. As more and more African Americans moved north, these tensions increased in northern cities as well. The NAACP’s principal objective was to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of all citizens of the United States, regardless of race. The organization used the democratic processes of lobbying and litigation in an effort to remove what it considered to be the three major evils of discrimination against African Americans—school segregation, lynching, and Jim Crow laws that legalized segregation in the South. Fighting Discrimination Through the Courts and Congress In 1930, with meager resources and personnel, the NAACP launched its first successful protest, challenging President Herbert Hoover’s nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court. The NAACP opposed the nomination of U.S. Circuit Court judge John J. Parker of North Carolina because he supported laws that discriminated against African Americans. When President Hoover refused to withdraw Parker’s name, the NAACP launched a massive six-week campaign to prevent his confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Senators received numerous wires, letters, and telephone calls from NAACP branches across the country and received pressure from African American newspapers, important segments of the white press, and organized labor. As a result of the NAACP’s efforts, Judge Parker failed to receive Senate confirmation by a vote of 41-39. The NAACP staged a coordinated strategy of legal battles in its campaign to end racial segregation in the nation’s schools. It took states and counties to court to force them to abide by the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which ruled that segregation was permissible only if the separate facilities for African Americans were equal to those for Caucasians. This legal strategy forced states, counties, and municipalities either to abandon segregation or to incur the costs of providing truly equal facilities, a practically impossible undertaking during the Depression. For its early litigation efforts, the NAACP relied on lawyers who volunteered their services. However, by the 1930’s, it was able to hire its own legal team, which consisted of Charles Hamilton Houston, the dean of Howard University School of Law, and Thurgood Marshall, who argued many cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1967, he became the first African American Supreme Court associate justice. The NAACP’s legal strategy worked. In 1936,
The Thirties in America National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ■ 663 the NAACP won a lawsuit that resulted in the desegregation of the University of Maryland School of Law, and in 01938, another NAACP lawsuit caused the Supreme Court to order the admission of an African American student to the University of Missouri School of Law. Fighting to End Lynching and to Protect Voting Rights While lynchings peaked during the 1890’s, an upsurge in lynchings of African Americans occurred during the 1930’s, perhaps because of frustrations unleashed by the Depression. The NAACP had concentrated its attention on the lynching epidemic sweeping the nation in the first two decades of the twentieth century but renewed its efforts for a federal antilynching law after a series of highly publicized lynchings in Alabama, Maryland, Indiana, and California. The Communist Party USA launched its own antilynching campaign. However, opposition from southern Democrats blocked the passage of such a law. The U.S. House of Representatives had passed the bill despite the opposition of all but one southern member. The U.S. Senate, however, carried out a sixweek-long filibuster that resulted in the withdrawal of the bill in February, 1938. Although unsuccessful in its efforts to encourage a federal law to be passed, the NAACP brought public attention to the brutality of lynching and helped to significantly reduce its occurrence, and states began to pass their own antilynching laws. The NAACP also was devoted to ending racial discrimination at the voting booth. Even though African American males were guaranteed the right to vote by the Fifteenth Amendment, which had been ratified in 1870 shortly after the end of the Civil War, states and local municipalities continued to use various elaborate tactics to prevent African Americans from voting. All-white state, county, and local police forces routinely intimidated, harassed, and even arrested African American voters. Throughout the South, African Americans faced losing their homes or their jobs if they tried to exercise their constitutional right to vote. If intimidation and economic pressure did not work, white mobs turned to vio- The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People fought to end the racial segregation—represented by this “white-only” restaurant sign in Lancaster, Ohio—prevalent in most parts of the United States. (Library of Congress) lence that included cross burnings, church burnings, arson of African American businesses and homes, and even murder and lynchings. The NAACP lobbied for laws that would not only outlaw these discriminatory tactics but also ban the use of poll taxes and literacy tests to deny African Americans their voting rights. The NAACP suffered a setback in its bid for equal voting rights when in 1937 a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court upheld as constitutional state poll-tax laws. Because many African Americans could not afford to pay poll taxes, they were effectively denied the right to vote. The NAACP continued its voting rights campaign throughout the 1930’s, but another thirty years passed before southern states were forced to abandon these discriminatory tactics. Fighting Discrimination During the Depression The Great Depression of the 1930’s created havoc inside and outside the NAACP. While all Americans suffered during the Depression, the economic situation was particularly disastrous for African Americans. The Harlem Renaissance and the exuberance of the Roaring Twenties were over. In addition to its other civil rights activities, the NAACP had to focus on ways to win jobs for African Americans and end discriminatory hiring practices. With white middleclass income drastically reduced, almost one-half
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